WRITING AGAIN TO THE CHAIR OF THE UI BOARD OF TRUSTEES, ROBERT KENNEDYS SON Dear Trustee Kennedy: Chris Kennedy I heard that you responded to a letter sent to you on the Steven Salaita case by writing flippantly: You were not brief enough. The letter started with I will be brief and went on for two short paragraphs, and so I take it this was an attempt on your part at grim humor? When I wrote you (at some length I am afraid) on August 21 invoking the legacy of your father, I did not receive any response from you - not even a cavalier one. I sent it to the UIBoT address, so maybe you did not even receive it. Now that I have your personal address, I am resending this letter, hoping that this time I would get a positive (or any) response from you. AN OPEN LETTER TO Mr. CHRISTOPHER KENNEDY, CHAIR OF UI BOARD OF TRUSTEES by Rima Merriman Petition Organizer Dear Mr. Christopher Kennedy: I am writing to you in your capacity as chair of the Board of Trustees at UIUC to invoke your late father’s legacy, which I know you try to honor as you serve in this post and in the many other public services you perform for this country. Many people have weighed in on Chancellor Phyllis Wise’s revocation of Professor Salaita’s contract. But what concerns me most as a Palestinian-American is the political motivation behind Professor Salaita’s firing (please see below for substantiation). Specifically, I am requesting you consider two recent developments in the discourse about Israel/Palestine that put the situation in a wider political context than the one that dominates both U.S. government foreign policy and, it appears, the policies of UIUC. Yesterday I forwarded part of a letter to the board by Professor David Blacker of the University of Delaware, who had declined an invitation to speak on September 29 at the 2014-15 CAS / MillerComm annual lecture series. He did this to “honor the growing worldwide pledge of academics not to appear at U. of I. unless the [Steven] Salaita matter is acceptably resolved.” In his letter to the organizers of the lecture series, Professor Blackwell explains, “I neither endorse nor reject any of SaIaitas remarks and their substance is not relevant to my decision to cancel. Neither do I base my decision on a n assessment of the affair s constitutional-legal aspects, which are uncertain. My decision is not about Israel/Palestine and it is not about legal nuance.” He goes on to focus on the issue that concerns him most in this matter, namely, “the academic freedom needed by scholars in order to do our job properly.” Other people have written to Chancellor Wise citing different concerns. For example, a statement by the United Faculty of Florida-University of Florida chapter strongly condemns Chancellor Wise’s decision to rescind the job offer to Professor Salaita as a “violation of due process and the principles of shared governance.” The issues highlighted above are important consequences of the action taken against Professor Salaita, but they do not address the motivations behind this egregious action. What concerns me most as a Palestinian-American is the political motivation behind Professor Salaita’s firing (Please take a look at ‘Salaita’stellar teaching record exposes political motivation behind his firing’ by Tithi Bhattacharya and Bill V. Mullen, published in Mondoweiss yesterday: mondoweiss.net/2014/08/teaching-political-motivation.html.) Specifically, I would like to draw your attention to two developments in the discourse concerning Israel/Palestine that put the situation in a wider political context than the one that dominates both U.S. government foreign policy and, it appears, the policies of UIUC. The first development involves the increasing parallels that are being made between Israel’s colonial military and the actions of the Israeli-trained police in Ferguson, Missouri, deployed to crush unarmed protesters demanding justice for the brutal murder of eighteen-year-old black American Mike Brown. More generally is the point Professor Brittney Cooper made in an article in Salon on August 5 titled “I was wrong about Gaza: Why we can no longer ignore the horrors in Palestine: I tried to limit my exposure to the bombings and screams. But heres why being black in America made me think twice,” which is this: “The same kind of nuance, the same hermeneutic of suspicion, the same ethic of care, that frames our understanding of black suffering and violence – unchecked policing, nonexistent economic opportunity, mass incarceration — in this political moment in the U.S. should frame our understanding of Gaza’s relationship to Israel. America’s sordid history of settler colonialism, slavery, mass incarceration and other racially driven social ills teaches us a lot about why our country identifies with Israel and it teaches us everything we need to know about why we shouldn’t.” I don’t presume the knowledge you have of your father, but I understand enough about his life in American politics to know that he stood for racial equality and social justice. This brings me to the second development I mention above, which relates to an increasing awareness among American Jews that Jewish identity must be extricated from the corrupting and deadly embrace of Zionism. The Executive Committee of MLA Ethnic Studies Division wrote to Chancellor Wise along this vein: Professor Steven Salaitas views can be considered anti-Semitic only if one insists that Jewish identity be bound up with uncritical support of Israel, something that many Jews reject. Branding anti-Israel or anti-Zionism speech as anti-Semitic is a ploy long used by Israel’s supporters to silence speech advocating for Palestinian rights. Meanwhile, Palestinian rights and very existence continue to be relegated to the background in mainstream discussions about the conflict. Lisa Bhungalia, Postdoctoral Faculty Fellow in the Humanities, Department of Geography, Syracuse University, made the following statement in a review of Judith Butler 2012 Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism (Aug 1): Palestinians continue to live in a political and ideological context in which they are deemed a demographic problem to be contained and controlled, in which their lives are taken with impunity, and in which they are disenfranchised, divided and placed under siege is rarely foregrounded.” This is an unconscionable state of affairs. I am therefore asking that you consider the above in making your decision in good conscience about Professor Salaita’s utterances. Respectfully,
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 06:33:43 +0000
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